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Help:Wiki Formatting/Citations
Citations and References On a lot of pages, it's likely that you'll find a statement followed by a little green question mark. What are these, and why are they everywhere? The Question Mark This question mark, which is placed inline using the template, serves as a placeholder for references 'where none are available. For example, take the following statement: This gives us: Rose punched Lucas Flint. Which is all well and good, but where in the story ''did Rose punch Lucas? Well, we don't know! So, we should use, C }} Rose punched Lucas Flint. And this conveys to a reader that while the information is available on the wiki, we don't know its source. This is commonly because the wiki's editors are also the writers of its source material, and we put planned events onto the wiki that haven't been written as full scenes yet. Making References Now, if the scene where Rose punches Lucas Flint is identified (for this example, in Chapter 4 of a book called "The Transfer Student"), all an editor needs to do is remove the template and replace it with a reference. This begs the question. What is a reference? We could try, But this is not a good idea. If we did this, then every time we talk about an event happening, we would have to reference it in the text, which would lead to a lot of things like this: * In Chapter 4 of The Transfer Student, Rose punched Lucas Flint. * In the short story The Cafe, '''Jennie Price commented that she likes the Quiet Night Cafe, evidenced by the line: "This place is nice. I like it!" * Gaylord is in the same year as the Main Cast at Makutu Kura, so he must be born in either 1998 or 1999. So, what should we do to keep articles concise? This works better! If we use the ref tag here, we get the following (plus the additional examples): * Rose punched Lucas Flint.The Transfer Student, Chapter 4 * Jennie Price likes the Quiet Night Cafe.The Cafe: "This place is nice. I like it!" * Gaylord Winfield was born between 1998 and 1999Gaylord is in the same year as the Main Cast at school. Which is then shown as a reference on any reference lists (which are placed into articles with the template): Where to place References So now we know how to place a citation and a reference. But where should they be used? Typically, a citation is placed at the end of a point. For example, if I were to state that Miller liked pudding, I would do so like this: Miller liked pudding. Because Miller liking pudding is a point by itself. I could also add that Miller likes all pudding except for banana pudding. At which point, I may arrange my references like this: * Miller liked pudding, with the exception of banana pudding. Or this: * Miller liked pudding, with the exception of banana pudding. Depending on whether there's: * Two separate scenes, one where Miller states that he likes pudding and one where he later clarifies that he doesn't like banana pudding, or * One scene where Miller states that he likes all pudding except banana pudding.